Issue: Utilities

Research with voters across the country points to the best path forward to hold power companies accountable. Messaging was extensively tested via qualitative and survey research, which identifies a clear path forward that focuses on corporate greed, monopolization, and corruption.

From our July 2025 study with The Alliance for Climate Transition (ACT), we found that residents in the US Northeast have little familiarity with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), but are intrigued by the technology when it is framed around improved electricity reliability and lower utility bills. However, those perceptions are endangered by concerns that BESS may endanger their homes or entail high upfront installation costs.

Finding “bright spots”, or models of success, can inspire and inform change. Today we’re sharing highlights from a Lab case study about how funders and local organizers and advocates built an inclusive and powerful climate movement in Minnesota that resulted in wins such as the state’s 2023 100% clean energy law.

Over the last four years, the Potential Energy Coalition has gathered a significant amount of data on how Americans are engaging with climate issues—what’s on their minds, what does and does not motivate them to act, whom we can move and how. In this pivotal moment, this data can offer crucial insights to inform and strengthen our collective work. During this session hosted by the Lab, Potential Energy will share their recent findings, and discuss where they see the biggest opportunities to advance climate action.

The Public Power Handbook is a guide for communities exploring models of publicly owned power, such as a municipal electric utility, as a path toward local control, clean and affordable energy investment, and democratic accountability.

A dangerous House reconciliation bill puts critical clean energy gains at risk. It proposes deep cuts to renewable energy tax credits, expands fossil fuel infrastructure, and slashes support timelines for federal clean energy projects. These changes threaten to undermine community-owned initiatives, derail national efforts to combat the climate crisis and delay or cancel an estimated $14 billion worth of clean energy developments. But this moment is also a call to action—and communities are answering it.

The United States is one of the largest energy consumers per capita, requiring households to have adequate energy expenditures to keep up with modern demand regardless of financial cost. This paper investigates energy burden, defined as the ratio of household energy expenditures to household income.